Mazzucchelli’s had been in business for 117 years before they sold a single piece of jewellery online. In early 2020, when COVID closed every one of their stores overnight, The Animals built them a profitable Shopify storefront in six weeks — and have continued to evolve it ever since, with a full redesign in 2022 and a further upgrade in 2025.
Mazzucchelli’s Jewellers was founded in Boulder, Western Australia in 1903, by watchmaker Matthew Mazzucchelli and jeweller Sam Downes. From a single store just outside Kalgoorlie, the business grew, through word-of-mouth, quality and reputation alone, into a national retailer of around 35 stores across five Australian states and territories — known for designer jewellery and watch collections from Vera Wang, Tag Heuer, Forevermark, Halo, Promise and Rand Diamonds, alongside their range of exclusive and rare pink diamonds.
At the time, The Animals were the full-service Agency of Record for The Jewellery Group, working across both Mazzucchelli’s and Zamels — which meant we knew the brands, the customers and the commercial pressures from the inside out. That context made what came next possible.
The brief
The brief, when it arrived, was less a brief than a phone call.
Australia had gone into lockdown. Mazzucchelli’s stores were closing, foot traffic was gone, and the business was sitting on millions of dollars of stock with no obvious way to sell it. The brand had thrived for over a century without ever needing an e-commerce channel. Now they needed one — properly, fast.
The ask: build a Shopify store that could trade on day one, look unmistakably like Mazzucchelli’s, and give customers enough confidence to buy fine jewellery online, sight unseen. And it needed to happen yesterday.
The approach
We treated this as a sprint, not a project. The team — alongside lead developer Leigh from Decode.com.au, who worked rigorously beside us at the highest standard — went seven days a week, twelve-to-sixteen-hour days, for six weeks straight. CEO Mudit Vora later told The CEO Magazine the website was “up and running within just three weeks,” true to the customer-facing timeline, and a fair reflection of how quickly the brand re-emerged online. Behind that, the build itself ran for six.
The Shopify foundation gave us speed. Beyond it, we built bespoke functionality the platform doesn’t ship with: expanded imagery and content spaces, blog sections, promotional code redemption, robust transactional security, fast fulfilment and educational content to help customers navigate the part of buying jewellery online that trips most shoppers up — sizing.
The results
The site was profitable from week one and has remained one of Mazzucchelli’s most important sales channels ever since. It was redesigned in 2022 to reflect the brand’s continuing evolution, and upgraded again in 2025 as the platform, the catalogue and the customer expectations all moved on.
The project has since been written into Mazzucchelli’s and The Jewellery Group’s broader digital transformation story, including in The CEO Magazine’s feature on Mudit Vora — one of several articles where the build now appears as a turning point in the company’s recent history. It remains one of the most significant projects in The Animals’ history.
Why this project matters to us
The best work often arrives disguised as the worst week of someone’s year. Mazzucchelli’s didn’t ask for a heroic e-commerce build — they asked for a way through a crisis. We’re proud of the work, prouder of the partnership, and grateful to Leigh at Decode.com.au for the craft he brought to the code beneath it.
If you’re looking for a Melbourne advertising agency that can take a complex commercial brief — a fast Shopify build, an e-commerce platform that needs to grow with you, a brand that needs to keep evolving online — and turn it into something that performs from week one, we’d love to talk.
Sandra Campagnolo, Senior Visual Merchandising Manager at Mazzucchelli’s, says the project represented a significant step forward in creating a more connected, scalable, and personalised digital experience while elevating the brand and streamlining operations at scale. With time limited and the business facing the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, the priority was to quickly build a reliable online income stream while keeping customers connected and supported when they needed it most. Working closely with partners The Animals, Decode, and the internal IT department, the team worked tirelessly to deliver a premium shoppable website that strengthened customer engagement, improved brand relevance in a rapidly changing retail environment, and created new opportunities for sustainable sales growth. Sandra noted that she would not hesitate to work with these partners again, not just in a crisis, praising their ability to rise to the challenge and deliver outstanding results under pressure.
